About

About this site…

In my years of studying about Permaculture, I have often been a bit frustrated with the majority of the authors. They are all living and writing and designing in the tropics and sub-tropics, or are doing amazing things in arid climates. I plan on living in a temperate climate… where it snows occasionally… where I can’t grow bananas!

While there are a few books, and it seems more every year, that touch on Permaculture in a Temperate Climate, many of them are about the general principles of Permaculture. Few of them get into the weeds, so to speak, of the actual implementation. I have found bits and pieces of very good information but never a good central clearinghouse for this information.

Permaculture is about design, and it is not about specific, cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions. However, sometimes, examples of projects that work, and that I can apply where I live, would be nice. That is what this website is all about. Applying Permaculture design principles where I live, or where I plan on living as soon as I get the chance!

As Permaculture is about design, just about anything that deals with gardening, farming, homesteading, and self-sufficiency can be viewed through the lens of Permaculture. You will find all that here on this site.

The main goal I have with this site is to get information that I feel is important in one place for me and others to read and to reference. I hope one day to incorporate more hands on material on this site, but for now I want to create as close to a single stop shop as possible for information on Temperate Climate Permaculture.

Please follow along as I share as much as I can about Permaculture, gardening, farming, homesteading, and self-sufficiency. This website is the product of a lot of research and some opinions. Any errors you may find are mine alone. I hope that you can walk away with at least one new piece of information that you can use to make your world a better place.

About me…

Why am I interested in Permaculture?

Growing up in South Florida, I had minimal exposure to large-scale agriculture. Occasional road trips took me past orange groves and pasture lands in Central Florida, but my view from the interstate highway was about as close as I ever got to modern farming. However, living in the sub-tropics (even though in the suburbs) I was surrounded by the natural world. I was continually bringing home snakes, frogs, fish, wounded birds, and baby ducks and creating habitats for them in aquariums and buckets and not-so-escape-proof boxes (sorry, Mom!). We had three citrus trees in our backyard, and there were many summer days I would spend as long as I could without touching the ground eating only tangelos and peeing from high branches.

In 1996 after graduating from art school, I moved to Kentucky. I was now surrounded by farmland and farmers, many of whom I would call friends. Most were involved with corn, wheat, and/or soybeans. This was a brand new experience to me. I had always been interested in biology, and agriculture to me was just a side shoot of this. As was my habit when confronted with something new, I went to the library to find anything I could read on the topic. I think I was expecting to find an “Idiots Guide to Farming”, but the vast majority of what I found was textbooks from the agricultural department of Western Kentucky University. It was all very technical, and truly it was very boring.

After a few weeks, I wandered over to the pet and hobby section of the library. I came across a book,“You Can Farm” by Joel Salatin. At first glance this was the exact book for which I was looking. However, as I read into it, I realized the author was anything but a typical farmer. As someone who never quite considered himself “ordinary”, I immediately identified with his anti-establishment attitude. But what I truly loved about Joel Salatin’s writing was that it just plain made sense. He wrote about minimizing work through intelligent design of farming systems, all with using almost no chemicals, and still producing a superior (e.g. healthier, better tasting, friendly toward the environment) product.

A quick, and very simplified example:

Traditional way: Put all the cattle in one large field. Have another field where hay is raised with chemical fertilizers and weed killers. Harvest the hay. Bring the hay to the cattle. Give all the cattle antibiotics, growth hormones, and anti-parasitic drugs to prevent illness and push growth. At some point there is the need to go through and collect/spread the manure around the field with a machine. The end results are stressed, unhappy cattle with questionable chemicals within meat and milk, farmers who are amateur industrial chemists and struggling to make ends meet, and land that is losing fertility every year and is basically barren and void of biodiversity.

Joel Salatin’s way: Place the cattle in a much smaller field. Every few days (even every few hours!), the cattle are moved to a new field with fresh, healthy, grasses and forbs to eat. A few days after the cattle leave the field, chickens are allowed in. The chickens scratch through the cow patties and eat the bugs and worms (negating the need to use poisons to kill the parasites that would re-infect the cattle), they spread the manure around (negating the need for people to do the work), they fertilize the fields with their own droppings (negating the work and cost and chemicals needed to fertilize), and they create their own products (eggs and meat) with minimal extra expense or work from the farmer. The end results are happy cattle with superior meat and milk products with minimal or no chemical additives, famers who make a profit due to extra product lines with minimal expenditure of time or money, and land that is gaining fertility and biodiversity. Brilliant!

This was my first exposure to alternative farming and food production. While he didn’t use the term, Joel Salatin was practicing Permaculture.

I continued to read as much as I could on the subject of alternative food production. This led me to books on hobby farming, self-sufficiency, and home gardening. My growing love of cooking dovetailed nicely with the growing options for superior tasting organic foods. Gone were the days of hippy, tree-huggers and their worm filled “organic” foods that tasted worse than what you got in the grocery store but weren’t “filled with no chemicals from the Man, man!” Organic food was being produced scientifically by people who were outside the norm but were not abnormal. And the food was better!

I had seen a few book titles for Permaculture during this time, but the covers of the books looked a bit odd. At first glance I dismissed these books, because they seemed a bit too hippy and “way out there” to me. There seemed to be an almost religious aura around these books that turned off my more logical mind. They also seemed to be dealing more with Australian agriculture, which it turns out they were since that is where Permaculture was developed.

Eventually, I read a book called “How to Make a Forest Garden” by Patrick Whitefield. This was truly the first Permaculture book that I read, although that term was rarely used in the book. The basic premise was designing a forest of plants (trees, shrubs, vines, etc.) that are useful to humans in a way that mimicked a natural forest. It was a simple concept, but it was, and still is, revolutionary to me.

I finally realized what Permaculture was not. It was not a tree-hugger, hippy, pseudo-religious idea. It was not about a militant, eco-fanatic approach to conservation. It is not “way out there”. However regrettable, you will find many who treat Permaculture in this way.

Permaculture is truly a scientific approach to land, plant, and animal management that treats the natural world with a sense of awe and respect. Permaculture is about practical sustainability on an individual as well as societal basis. The science of Permaculture has a lot of breadth and depth, but basically, I think it is how I expected God wanted us to treat the land back in the Garden of Eden.

As you can see from my story above, most of my “experience” with Permaculture has been in the form of reading about it. After working as a graphic designer and then going back to school for another eleven years to become a physician and then traveling with the Air Force for another seven years, I have had little time to do more than plant small gardens between studying, working, and moving. We finally settled down in East Tennessee in the Summer of 2015. We are in the process of implementing the knowledge I have gained from my years of reading to help create my own small corner of Eden.

40 Comments

Hey, I like the new website!
“However regrettable, you will find many who treat Permaculture in this way.”
Exactly. Try finding a PDC without a bunch of “purple breathers” chanting or dancing around a fire or a drum circle, or praying to the “Mother goddess earth spirit” or whatnot. (Midwest Permaculture would be one, Geoff Lawton’s PRI makes two, any others?)
I don’t want to spend thousands of dollars, then be required to spend time listening to people talk about how they’re communing with the “Earth Spirit”. Oh gag me!
“No dude, I don’t want to toke. I’m just trying to learn more about permaculture!”
If permaculture is to have any chance of being mainstream, it’s gotta shed the “dirty hippie” typecast. I’d rather have permaculture AND capitalism, so I don’t have to be a poor dirty hippie! Paul Wheaton (of permies.com) talks about this a bit. Anyway, I’ll be following your posts. Looking forward to it!

Are you still living in Kentucky?I have visited Polyface farms several times now and Joel S is one of my food heroes. It was good to read your thoughts on his approaches.
f Kentucky is Temperate area, what might you call 45 degrees latitude in EAstern Canada? We have severe winters and I also felt the PDC curriculum, was more of a global orientation. Accordingly i have been developing and presenting a workshop on Fire, heating,cooking and related topics, as they represent a critical life skill not addressed in typical PDC
regards, Tom

Like the site so far. I just joined. I’m also latitude 45 (almost 46) but in Minnesota. Winters here are rather “cool” (we live in denial during warm weather season). The more I read about permaculture, the more I realized that I’ve been practicing it for a while but never realized I was. I live surrounded by lawns but my neighbors have gotten used to it. I wanted to comment on the “any chance of being mainstream” mentioned by Rechovot by saying there is no chance of being mainstream unless someone comes around with a magic wand and all of a sudden all lawns disappear and the land goes back to how it was. The most we can hope for is that more people “see the light” and change their way of thinking. There are worse things than being a “poor dirty hippie” because “poor dirty hippies” were promoting what is now known as permaculture many decades ago. I was lucky to have landed in a city (actually more like a not so big town) lot with more than half a dozen 100 year old oaks that doesn’t photograph well in Google Map. My mission in life is to help the bumblebee and other wild bees flourish, how my lot is transforming (partly by me, mostly by itself) is secondary but one helps the other. Birds are also a great help since somehow shrubs and plants are showing up on their own, and I suspect birds are the reason. John, good job.

Great site, and very useful resources for those of us in cooler areas. We need all kinds of design to inform our ways of improving and sustaining our food sources. I think the spiritual side has its place for some, as does the aspect of commerce – but we need more people to see the benefits of a permaculture approach to the environment. Thanks for sharing what you have.
John, Scottish Highlands.

I really love your site John, I live here in Northern Utah and and am equally inspired with Permaculture. My PDC was great and I have learned a ton and am very excited as you are to really get to know temperate climate stuff. Thanks for all your work here man.
Josh

I am really glad to find you blog and to have met you on Permise… I love you goals and outlook on things. Please let me know if I can ever answer any of your question directly, or just act as a sounding board for you ideas. I think if you present you case in the correct context to just about any building department in TN, you will be successful. If not, we will just get my bulldog of a PE after them, and there will not be much they can do about that except grant you a variance.

Hello John,
I spent a lot of time on your old site, and it looks like I will be doing the same here. I have you linked as a top reference on my site, and if I ever get any traffic maybe I’ll send you some. I am with you all the way, and have the land to slowly implement permaculture now. For you and the above commentors, I learned of permaculture from Jack Spirko of The Survival Podcast. It isn’t “permanent culture” if you can’t survive, and permaculture is only sustainable way with out grubbing on the land like serfs. He is into permaculture as survival and he inspired me to buy some acres and give it a shot and I love it. I am still learning, but if I ever discover something new, or get a great guild going I will document it and let you know. Until then I will be homesteading with permaculture as my guide and self sufficiency as my goal. (and hopefully blogging more now that the leaves are almost all fallen.)

Permaculture is spreading rapidly & even on the edge of becoming mainstream. For instance, our very own USDA has recently asked Geoff Lawton to teach his new online permaculture course to their entire institution.

Do you know if this is still in the works, or if it has happened already? I’d be interested in being put in contact with the USDA people organizing it as it could be helpful information for my group’s work with children and youth permaculture teacher trainings. Thanks, Patty Parks-Wasserman

Love the new website–and all of your great reference material! Regarding the PDC–the experience of taking a course is life changing. There is just something about going through the experience and taking the time to really “put it all together.” Like you John, I had read mountains of material prior to taking the PDC, but something about going through that process just clicked the light bulb and gave me “AH HA” moment, and made it so much easier to put everything together. to Rechovot– ALong with Midwest, Peter Bane or Wayne Weiseman would be non-“purple-breather” approaches, or Mark Shepard if you have or plan on having large property. Thanks for all you do John!

Hi John, really like your site. I too am interested in permaculture and want to apply it now in real life. We bought some land west of Chicago (13 acre cornfield basically) and wish to transform it into a permaculture paradise. Any advice where to start? My plan is to develop it into a restaurant supply forest or something like that. Permaculture is great but where do you actually start? Thanks

Jelena – If you have not done so already, take a Permaculture Design Course (PDC). Make sure it is based on Bill Mollison’s 72-hour course. This will give you a firm foundation to design and develop your land.

Thanks John for such an excellent website on Temperate Climate Permaculture! I have enjoyed many of the things you have presented, especially the trees and fungi series and yes, the photos are excellent!
I spent about 5 years studying Permaculture literature before I was able to attend a 2 week PDC in 2004 along the Hood Canal in WA. It was excellent and in spite of there being several “tree huggers” I enjoyed every bit of it. You know, it takes a village or tribe to wildcraft/harvest from a food forest, and that means all kinds of different folks.
The PDC was an excellent way of connecting the dots of Permaculture for me, plus since it was given in the bioregion that I was currently farming in, it helped me to create a reference of sorts for guild plantings for my land even during the course. I would advise you to attend a course that will reflect the types of plants that are growing in your chosen land region.
Fast forward almost 10 years and I find myself in a completely different bioregion, North Central Washington about 20 miles from the Canadian border, in fact it is -3 degrees F outside right now! I was fortunate to take another PDC this past August, here in this bioregion, it was very valuable because the instructors emphasized the trees and plants which live around here. It was also valuable because I could compare and contrast the two courses and I can see I have certainly come a long way since my first PDC in 2004!
So, by all means, take a PDC when you are able to and my advice is to take more than one (if you are able to manage it, many instructors will take work trades in lieu of $$), each one will give you another way of seeing Permaculture.
Again, thank you for your excellent website, I have really enjoyed it and learned a lot!

Joined today and am enthused. Here in Maine, we’ve got some Permaculture sources, and since we live here, it’s important to learn how to LIVE here.

So, are there CHAPTERS of Temperate Climate Permaculture? I know that Kentucky practices will be important to learn about, as they include the understanding. Do we identify ourselves by ZONE to get the best information distributed?

Just learning about Xanthoceras Sorbifolium (Yellowhorn). Looks like J.L.Hudson seedbank is best source for bulk seed. Any thoughts on this multipurpose shrub?

So, thanks for creating this resource, and I’ll be digging in.

Colin,
Zone 5a-Maine, a region forecast to not croak from moderate climate change.

Beautiful new site, I’ve just joined and looking forward to going through the whole website. Up in Wisconsin, zone 4b and am a recent grad of Geoff Lawton’s first online PDC. So looking forward to planting a perennial veggie garden (a la Paradise Lot) and already have found good info in your content towards that end. Cheers!

I’m new to your site, and I am just getting to know more about permaculture, but I am having the opposite problem to you so far. I live in the ‘home’ of permaculture, I guess you could say- Australia. Problem is, I’m at the wrong end! Bill Mollison started in Melbourne, and there are many great permaculture farms and courses over here, but they are all in the south. Several fantastic ones in Tasmania. However, it never snows where I am, and all the info about seasonal gardening, and how to manage frosts etc is pointless. I need the info on gardening in a hot climate, but it’s hard to find — perhaps we should pool our resources so we can all see the whole picture!

Hi John. I”m from Poland. My name is Agnes and I’ve just added myself to Your blog as “na wsi” (at the village). A couple of years ago we bought with the housband a land at the lakes and the forests, but in the middle of the village. Last year we’ve bought there a little house and started to make a forest garden, the place for the animals, birds, vegetables and flowers. I want it to be my heaven on the Earth. I was looking for the informations about the permacultural gardens in the net and found You blog and the site. Great job! I/m sure I will be Your loyal reader (and forgive me the spelling mistakes, please).

Happy to have just discovered your excellent web resource and commentary. A frequent traveler to Greece, I delight in their traditional agricultural methods which are highly intensive by necessity, given that family plots are often subdivided over generations to accommodate new family growth. They must also irrigate efficiently to succeed in a climate with limited rainfall. Above all, they must be effective because many Greeks still rely heavily on these plots for subsistence as well as income.

At home in North Florida, we are constantly seeking to incorporate good permaculture practices into our own small horse farm for greater efficiencies and effectiveness.

Very nice website. I live in Texas and am in the early stages of truly understanding permaculture. This page in particular on your site says a lot about how I have felt about farming, gardening and learning something more sustainable like permaculture.

So John, you encouraged folks to come and visit you. We live in Cincinnati, and are currently vacationing in Gatlinburg. We’d like to come and visit you if possible in the near future. We’re boning up on permaculture and what that entails with the intent of purchasing land and doing that to it. Where do you live, and can we come visit you?

Hi John, I recently found your website from a Google search whilst doing my online PDC with Geoff Lawton in 2013. It has stuck with me since then and I now find myself setting up my own website for St George town community here in south west Queensland, Australia. It is my intension to use my website as a permaculture resource, to help spread the word and yes to take away the hippy aspect people have about sustainability etc. I love your format and so will set my site up along a similar line, hopefully allowing some form of interaction /forum for my community so that we can share ideas and eventually set up a permaculture group in St George. A lot of your info, planting index etc. is extremely relevant to our semi arid temperate climate so I would like to link my pages through to yours if that is okay. You have a great way of writing and I would like people to visit your site for more info, if this is a problem can you let me know and I will not link. I am a subscriber and love your updates. Keep up the great work. Regards Sheila

I just found your website. Loving it! I live on the coast in Maine. Rocks, bad soil, more rocks. Some boulders. Some very big boulders… the dregs of the glaciers. Makes for spectacular seascapes. Really hard on the gardeners though. I got my PDC 3 years ago and I’m just now branching out to start to teach it to others. Starting small. There is a wealth of information on the internet, and some very good (and very expensive) books. But actually there is very little about growing on land like this, or zones 5 and less. I do get lots of rain (and snow) but when your land is more like a gravel pit than Eden, steps need to be taken to keep that water on the land.

I agree with the aspect that many of you have mentioned, that sometimes the ‘spiritual’ gets in the way of the true understanding of nature. I recently read (tried to read) a book where this made it impossible for me to turn the pages. Even the pages and writing were in rainbow colours (to vibrate with my inner spirit) .. ugh, gag!

Anybody in my neck of the woods? Would love to meet and exchange notes.

I was utilizing your website, yet again, in my plant research and got to thinking that I should let you know how much I appreciate it! I clicked on over to the about section and proceeded to get offended. I love your articles, your research, your time volunteered to spread all this information with the world, and I do appreciate your scientific viewpoint. However, science does fail us often, and is often just flat out wrong. Often. I love permaculture because I found it to be the most most effective tool I can use to reduce my impact and to also help others reduce their impact on the Earth. I am Buddhist (secular) and love all sentient beings on this planet and appreciate everything we have here. Therefore, I guess you could all me a tree-hugger, a dirty hippie, although I don’t do the new-age spirit stuff (or the old age theistic stuff for that matter). Really, I just have a lot of love and want to preserve this planet and know that trying to invent new technology while continuing this lifestyle will get us nowhere. We have to make systemic changes. Calling people who believe that a dirty hippie is so degrading. I just feel really sad that I read that here.

The film will take an hour and forty-five minutes or so of your life but is so worth it. Not exactly on permaculture, but this guy figured a lot out on his own and his information is really useful for anyone trying to grow food, no matter how they do it.

Hello! Just stumbled on your website & was very happy to find it. My dream is to build a sustainable home – something along the lines of an Earthship – but my boyfriend & I plan to move to Washington, and I’m sure the rain & clouds will make it a bit more tricky. It’s good to see a site devoted to permaculture in temperate zones. Looking forward to what you have to say. I’m also a huge Joel Salatin fan, though I wasn’t aware he had written a book. I intend to read that right away.

I have been working in similar fashion only in an urban environment in San Antonio TX. As the climate is extreme, almost desert like in certain areas and the soil changes drastically literally from one space to another, I have had the challenge of not only determining what will grow, but why/how. Some areas are very Mediterranean like and I originally attempted incorporating their growing practices but had mixed results. Things that I would never have considered to be issues have proven themselves excessive when looking at gardening there such as burnt plants, wind withered plants, plants that had too much rain that they mildewed at the roots due to the soil and lack of drainage when it was parched, even not having pollinators after a certain time period due to it being too dry. I have begun working with principles of permaculture, only I didn’t realize it was this, I was thinking about how to infuse more of a natural environment that would sustain a longer grown period and had come across some articles about how they are changing the landscape within desert regions in Africa. This is so similar in principle.

So glad to have found you. I was becoming disheartened by the seeming lack of “mid-america” permaculture participants on the web. I have reached out to a couple of local contacts but they are very involved in their own projects (important as they are I’m sure). I have only looked around for a short time but it seems like you’ve created a great resource here! Shalom

This site will be so helpful, thanks so much! I just read Paradise Lot, about two guys implementing permaculture on an urban lot in temperate climate. It reignited my desire (from years and years ago, after reading Bill Mollison’s big book stemming from his life in the tropics) to figure out how to do this in Missouri. Thank you so much!!!